Posted tagged ‘Banana’

“It is beyond the imagination of the menu-maker that there are people in the world who breakfast on a single egg.”

May 4, 2017

Last night was downright cold. I huddled under the afghan wearing my sweatshirt. This morning the sun is shining, even glinting, and the sky is blue. It is still chilly but is, at least, a pretty day.

My back is a bit better. I just can’t walk upright. On the evolutionary chart, I most resemble homo habilis without the hair.

Yesterday morning, Gracie wanted out around 5. Always willing to oblige, I got up and walked her to the gate. The air was filled with the morning songs of birds. What gave me pause and a smile was among the songs I could hear the gobble of turkeys from what sounded like a street away. As the other birds sang, the turkeys kept gobbling. I figure a song is a song.

Yesterday I had Frosted Flakes with a banana for dinner. I used my Animal Cracker’s bowl. I could have been six except my mother would never have allowed just cereal for dinner. It was breakfast. Dinner was meat, potatoes, and a vegetable. Lunch was soup or a sandwich or both.

My father hated breakfast in continental Europe. His complaint was the assorted cold cuts and cheeses were for lunch, not breakfast. He would usually have coffee and some sort of bread and butter and complain between mouthfuls. My mother and I enjoyed breakfast and the different sorts of cheeses and meats. In Ghana, I always had two fried eggs and two pieces of toast. Both were cooked on a small charcoal burner. The bread was leaned against the hot sides and turned so both sides browned. The eggs were fried in peanut oil. Ghanaians ate for breakfast what they had for any meal.

We affectionally called my mother the seagull. She’d eat whatever for breakfast. I can remember her standing one morning at the counter eating a sandwich of a cold but cooked hot dog with cucumber slices washed down with diet coke. If she had eggs, they were scrambled with cheese or whatever else she could scavenge in the fridge. When she visited me, I always had biscotti, a favorite of hers. She didn’t drink coffee but did use it for dipping the biscotti. I still have biscotti. The other day it was anisette.

I have some seagull in me as I am not bound by convention when it comes to meals; however, cold hot dog is out even for me.

“First a voice; then an echo. Then nothing.”

July 10, 2016

Today is yesterday continued. It is cloudy, damp and still a bit chilly. The one difference is the sky looks a tad lighter so maybe there is hope for a better afternoon. Today I will finally pot those plants. I drag the soil bag from my car to the front walk then I nursed my back all last night. Such effort must not go to waste.

This morning my breakfast hardened back to my childhood. I had a bowl of Rice Krispies to which I added a cut banana. That cereal still snaps, crackles and pops. I remember putting my ear close to the bowl so I could hear the sound.

When I was a kid, there were so many different sounds I don’t hear much anymore. The pop of the toaster is one I remember well. Our toaster was noisy. It was also usually covered with crumbs. Two slots meant only two pieces of toast at a time. There were four of us so two of us had to practice patience. We didn’t do well with that.

The slamming of screen doors all summer long drove my mother crazy. She’d yell at us not to slam the door. We always did anyway. It was the quickest way to get out of the house. Screen doors now shut on their own.

My neighborhood was filled with kids. We all lived in a sea of duplexes. The ones at the top of the hill had their back doors facing our back doors at the bottom of the hill. Mothers always yelled out the back doors at lunch time and at dinner time. They always yelled names so the kids playing in the yards would know who had to go inside. By supper time the yards were empty, the kids all gone inside. My neighborhood here has a lot of kids: nine of them. They stay close to home so no yelling is necessary. I never hear a screen door slamming or a mother yelling.

Roller skates on sidewalks made a distinctive sound, a clacking sound. Those were the four wheel skates that fit over my shoes. They had a leather strap across the top of my foot and a front grip I tightened to my shoes using a key. Many times the skate fell off but only the  front part. Losing the key was the worst of all. There wasn’t any way to tighten the skates. I just had to hope someone else’s key worked.

So many other sounds are gone mostly without us noticing. Our world is quieter now. The phone makes little noise, no more dialing. The fridge hums. No snow appears on the TV. I can’t remember the last time I heard baseball cards attached to the spokes of bicycle wheels. How about olly olly oxen free? Where did that go?

What About All Those Bananas?

September 15, 2012

Sorry, but this will have to be quick as my time is running down. I am back in Accra as I will be leaving tomorrow. I won’t be able to fill you in on all that has happened since I left the monkeys, but I figured just the monkeys will do for today!

The Monkey Sanctuary is off of a long, dusty dirt road filled with ruts. We’d see nothing then a village would appear then we’d leave it quickly behind us.  The village nearest the monkeys was large, bigger than the others we had passed. We were driving to park the car when I saw one of the monkeys running behind the house. It was a Mona monkey, and they seem to come and go into the village at will. The monkeys come usually in the morning and early evening to eat but are more than happy when new bunches of gawkers appear with bananas in hand. The monkeys are not at all shy, and they stand up and spread out their arms to beg. We bought bananas and one of the critters grabbed it out of my hand. Grace, my student, offered to show me how to do it and the monkey grabbed her banana as well even before she was ready. With the second banana I held on and the monkey had to be satisfied with half and then half again. There were several around us by the time we started into the forest.

The woods were thick and so humid every pore in my body sweated. The guide stopped several times to show us trees and plants which were historically significant. including one called the giraffe tree. We kept going deeper into the forest to see the Colobus monkey, a larger shyer monkey than the Mona. We walk a long way until the guide noticed the long white tail of a Colobus.The monkey was sitting on a limb watching us. We kept walking but saw only four of these amazingly beautiful animals.

From there we walked to the monkey graveyard  where there are several graves marked with the sexes of the monkeys and their death dates. Two humans are buried there also, both fetish priests to the monkeys.

According to the guide, the Colobus monkeys will make a huge racket late at night if there is something going to happen. He said the fetish priests could understand what the monkeys meant and would interpret. The monkeys still make the racket but no one can understand anymore.

When we left, I was soaked as if it had been raining. The air conditioning in the car was wonderful.

I have so many more things to tell you about the last few days but it will have to wait until I am home. I leave tomorrow night at 10:10 on the Delta flight.

I’ll see you on Tuesday!


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